The Dream Factory: Frankenweenie

Frankenweenie directed by Tim Burton
Walt Disney Pictures 2012
Rated PG
Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Nominee 2013
BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film Nominee 2013
Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film Nominee 2013
Annie Award for Best Animated Feature Nominee 2013
A-

I can clearly remember being seven and first seeing advertisements for The Nightmare Before Christmas in my Disney Adventures magazine.  Mr. Burton's ghoulish ink illustrations, used as promotional art, captured my imagination and I began to entreat my parents to take me to the film, though no one else in the family was particularly interested in going to see it.  The film, my first experience with stop motion animation, ignited a lifelong love for the art form, as well as for the story's writer, Mr. Burton.

Since 1993, Mr. Burton has both inspired me and disappointed me, but as I sat in the cinema waiting for his latest creation to begin, I had high hopes that Frankenweenie would belong to the former group and I was not disappointed.

The film follows the same storyline as that of the 1984 short (which I have fond childhood memories of watching every Halloween on the Disney Channel).  When Victor Frankenstein's dog is hit by a car, he attempts to resurrect him with electricity on a stormy night and succeeds.  The film, needing to flesh out the plot, introduces a science fair at Victor's school, and discovering Victor's project, the other students (all of them parodies of some horror figure or other), resurrect their own pets.  But, their motivations being quite different than Victor's, the pets rampage through the town and Victor must devise a way to stop them.

I wasn't expecting this film to be a comedy, but I found myself laughing aloud quite frequently at the numerous horror references sprinkled throughout the film.  Most of these jokes went over the heads of the children in attendance, and I think my husband and I were the only ones laughing most of the time due to the demographics of our particular screening.  But the relationship between Victor and Sparky, his dog, are something all people with pets can relate to, so the references shouldn't prevent non-horror fans from enjoying the film.

Aside from what felt, to me, like a mixed message about science and the failure to teach younger viewers a valuable lesson about letting go, the film hit all the right notes.  This is Mr. Burton as himself, filled with whimsical nostalgia and none of the soulless commercialism of his last few films.

Land of Confusion

The Chaos Walking Trilogy
by Patrick Ness
Consisting of: The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer, and Monsters of Men
Guardian Award 2008, Carnegie Medal short-list 2009 (The Knife of Never Letting Go); Carnegie Medal short-list 2010 (The Ask and the Answer)

I first began the trilogy in November when my book club read The Knife of Never Letting Go. At first, I didn't particularly like it, as the protagonist Todd and the stream of consciousness style were both a bit annoying, but once the momentum started to build, it was difficult to put down.

The main premise concerns a planet, known only as New World, that has been colonized (presumably by Earthlings, though one cannot be certain, as they refer only to their ancestral home as Old World). On New World, there is a curious ailment, called Noise, that affects all men, broadcasting their every thought to those around them. Animals are also affected by this, but women are somehow immune. At the beginning of the first novel, we are told that all of the women of Prentisstown have died from a virus released by the native Spackle during a war decades earlier.

When Todd discovers a spot in a nearby swamp in which there is no Noise, he reports it to his adoptive parents, Ben and Cillian, who immediately pack up his belongings and urge him to flee, fearing for his safety. The quiet is, in actuality, a girl named Viola, recently marooned in the swamp when her scouting ship crashed. Having no way to contact the coming colonists she left behind, her only choice is to trust Todd and hope that the fabled settlement of Haven has the means with which she might contact the others. Thus begins an unrelenting race to reach Haven before Prentisstown and its power-mad mayor has the opportunity.

Along their journey, Todd and Viola encounter various other settlements, each with a different social hierarchy than Prentisstown, including a matriarchal society and another town where men and women live apart from each other. In the later installments of the trilogy, Ness delves deeper into gender issues, pitting Mayor Prentiss' group of men against a terrorist organization led by and comprised mostly of women. The stakes are amped up higher by Ness' choice to put Todd and Viola on opposing sides, connecting each of them to the leaders of each side (Mayor Prentiss and Mistress Coyle, respectively).

Ness also creates an intriguing race in the native Spackle, who share a collective consciousness with each other and the world itself. Their language is expressed through thought-broadcasting (the Noise so despised by the colonists), and late in the series it is questioned if the human race is capable of ever fully utilizing this thought network as the Spackle do.


While the first novel is narrated solely by Todd, subsequent installments add one narrator each, so the third volume has three distinct voices (Todd, Viola, and a Spackle known as 1017). Interestingly, the series uses different fonts for each character, so one knows at a glance whose thoughts are recorded on the page; however, several members of the book club that I attend have noted that the e-book does not maintain these different fonts.

I don't think I've read such a highly lauded series that so challenges readers' thinking since first reading His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. I cannot recommend this series enough, and although it is often dark and grim, the conclusion is a satisfying one in which we hope the characters might find the bright future of which they dream.

Series Grade: A+

The Magic of Knowledge

Enchantress from the Stars
by Sylvia Engdahl
Newbery Honor 1971

Long out of print and re-released at the beginning of the millennium, Engdahl's Enchantress from the Stars tells the story of Elana, a young woman studying to serve as a field agent in some intergalactic anthropological service. While traveling with her father and fiance (both also field agents), the three are ordered to intervene in the current affairs of a primitive planet called Andrecia, and when another agent traveling with the crew is killed by one of the colonists attempting to claim Andrecia as their own, Elana is asked by her father to aid in their plan.

As the existing civilizations of both the medieval Andrecians and their more advanced conquerors might collapse if they knew more advanced civilizations existed, the field service agents cannot allow themselves to be discovered by either group. Thus, the idea to present Elana as an enchantress is born.

Engdahl does a brilliant job juggling the three narrative strains throughout the book, each one having a distinctive voice. My personal favourite is that of Georyn and his brothers, which, as Andrecians, is written in a fairy tale style with Elana as an enchantress, her various scientific gadgets as magic, and the colonists' construction equipment as a dragon. The colonists are depicted as stereotypical spacemen with rayguns, though Jarel lends a bit of humanity to them as he begins to question their reasoning behind the colonization of this particular planet. And, finally, Elana's narrative, which is the primary one of the novel, is written as a field report.

This is a fairly sophisticated novel, which is likely why it is now categorized as YA (having been published in the 70s, there was no real distinction between children's and YA fiction at the time). Not only does Engdahl's narrative accurately portray the same events as interpreted by three disparate cultures, but it also asks challenging questions of its readers, such as if it's appropriate to guide the events of a particular civilization or if it's worthwhile to pursue knowledge if it will render one an outsider. I cannot recommend this book strongly enough.

Grade: A+

Battle Royale Revisited?

*A Note*
Starting with this entry, all books reviewed will be given a letter grade to make my opinion more clear. Older entries have been graded retroactively.
****

The Hunger Games Trilogy
by Suzanne Collins
Consisting of: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay

Thanks to a friend loaning me all three of Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games trilogy, I can finally join the rest of the YA-reading world in my frustration with the final book. I am, however, glad that I waited to read the series until it was released in its entirety, as I would not have been able to stand the wait between books. That said, I completed the entire trilogy within several days' time, thanks to a short trip back home for an interview.


For those of you living under a rock, Hunger Games tells the story of Katniss Everdeen, a girl chosen to participate in an annual competition where youths aged twelve to eighteen must kill each other for survival. The games, we are told, are used to punish the twelve districts of Panem (a country replacing what remains of the US in the near-future) for an uprising that took place seventy-four years ago. So each year, two teens (a boy and a girl) are drawn at random from each district. People may volunteer to take the place of the randomly chosen, as Katniss volunteers to go, in order to save her twelve year old sister.

The remainder of the first book focuses on the events of the games themselves, and as Katniss is our narrator, we know only what she knows. At times, this can be frustrating, as she spends much of the first few days simply distancing herself from the other competitors. Eventually, she makes a few strategic alliances and wins the game. The two remaining books detail the new uprising in the districts and Katniss's integral role in the revolt against the capital.

As I've already complained, the choice to use Katniss as the narrator is problematic at times, especially in later books, as she is frequently kept in the dark about various plans until they are executed. What makes this choice worse is that Katniss is not a very likable character. She's cold, distant, and self-serving; ideal qualities for someone competing in the games, I suppose, but not for the protagonist of a trilogy.

The writing is rather brusque, which suits our narrator perfectly, but does not often provide adequate detail for my tastes. Some passages become especially muddled in the last book during battle scenes, and the death scenes of several major characters left much to be desired. One would think that after spending three books becoming attached to a character that they would be granted more than a few meager sentences! Additionally, the latter two-thirds of the last book are incredibly rushed; I would have liked a more even pace, though I understand that it may have been intentional, as one does not have time to collect thoughts on the battlefield.

I also really would have liked more information on the history of Panem. We are never told what led to the destruction of the US as we knew it. Why did the capital move to Denver (We are told it's a major city in the Rockies, which leads me to think of the Colorado capital)? Did the religious right finally attempt to secede from the union, ultimately destroying our nation? Or was it terrorism that brought about our demise? I am truly hoping that in the film adaptation, Collins gives us more information on the world she's created.

All in all, I can easily understand why the trilogy is so popular right now. It's a great read with some truly interesting ideas about revolution and society, even if those ideas could have been expanded upon. Go read it before the films are released.

Series Grade: A